Remaking John Wayne?

Remaking John Wayne?

There are certain things that are sacred in these United States and while we watch as our federal government attempts to dismantle icon after icon, business model after business model, economic theory after economic theory, and the very fiber of the Constitution I sit here and wonder what next? But as soon as I become concerned about the direction the country might be taking something happens. I see ‘We the People’ standing up and being heard and realize that no matter how much politicians today want to control our lives, taking away as many liberties and rights in their quest for ultimate power, the country and the people will push back.

You can see more and more the frustration on the faces of staunch liberals who agreed with the President when he said, “We won, and we can do what we want.” One of the leaders of the frustrated liberals is Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, whining at a microphone yesterday that we should stop fighting the Senate health care bill and let the government take care of us. His cries of desperation ran over the airwaves as he looked ahead to his next election when it looks like the people of Nevada will be booting him out of office, and all the while he will be scratching his head and saying, ‘But I did it for the common people, surely they are smart enough to understand that?’ Mr. Reid you underestimate the people of your State and of this country. Underestimating the people is happening a great deal lately.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, now there is rare intellect –she is the Congresswoman who believes that natural gas is an excellent energy source and alternative to fossil fuels. She gives speeches where she talks to the crowd as if they are elderly and senile or in the 2nd grade. She is the one who accused the CIA of lying to her but after witnesses came forward to debunk her comments she retreated, not apologizing, just retreating. She has almost as many gaffs in her speeches as VP Biden…well maybe more. Here is her take on a Value Added Tax (VAT), a tax on manufacturers at each stage of production on the amount of value an additional producer adds to a product. She thinks it is a good idea because:
“The VAT would level the playing field between U.S. and foreign manufacturers, the latter of which do not have pension and healthcare costs included in the price of their goods because their governments provide those services, financed by similar taxes.”
"They get a tax off of that and they use that money to pay the healthcare for their own workers," Pelosi said, using the example of auto manufacturers. "So their cars coming into our country don't have a healthcare component cost.”
"Somewhere along the way, a value-added tax plays into this. Of course, we want to take down the healthcare cost, that's one part of it…"

What in the world is she saying? I guess a lot of folks are wondering the same thing since her poll numbers are less than stellar at 33% approval in her district. Speaker of the House or not there are still those upstart voters out there who just might send her packing.

Does the President’s actions help ease the minds of the centrist liberals as he plays golf and basketball and parties at the White House? Does it ease their minds with the daily deaths in Afghanistan of U.S. military troops and his still being undecided on what he wants to do? What is the cringe factor when the President takes the time to greet the fallen soldiers at Edward’s AFB as their coffins are returned from Afghanistan? He made sure the press was there. And how long did this man stay with the returning heroes? The total time he took was 15 minutes from the time the helicopter left the White House until it returned to the White House, press corps in tow. Sounds a bit like his visits to Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon, both seen in one day – but it shows how much he cares for the environment. He brought the family along, and like a scene from the movie National Lampoons Vacation to Wally-World they jumped out of their cars, ran to the edge, looked over, and then left. He then took his family on a real vacation, something all Americans can identify with; he went to play golf on Martha’s Vineyard (also not a very smart choice given politicians and their histories there).

To his credit Bill Clinton figured it out. He worked with businesses not against them, and that included the Chamber of Commerce. He knew that healthcare was a topic that Americans didn’t want to be messed around with and he put it on a back burner. He spoke to any news channel that wanted to listen and never singled out any people as enemies of the state. He was doing what he was elected to do – please the people enough that they would re-elect him.

The liberal media has had its opinions, one of which was that Conservatism was dead. Conservatism is not dead for all of you willing to start the funeral marches, it just needed a wake-up call much the same way a man named Jimmy from Plains, Georgia opened the door for Ronald Reagan to walk through.

If the far left in this country hasn’t received the message yet wait until the next set of elections and realize that what Thomas Jefferson said two hundred years ago is as true today as it ever was, “A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”
And as for John Wayne? Hollywood is in the process of remaking True Grit with Matt Damon and Josh Brolin. They have the freedom to do so just like we the people have the freedom not to spend our money to see it.

Red and Yellow?

Did I just hear it right that the Empire State Building is celebrating the rise of Communist China by lighting their building with Red and Yellow lights? What's next the celebration of the rise of the Soviet Union?

An Open Letter to National Public Radio

This morning your news people described the current government of Honduras as de facto. Perhaps you should look up the meaning of the word. "Without being officially established" is not how you should describe the constitutionally selected President Micheletti. Ex-President Zelaya attempted to hold a non-binding referendum. Congress and the Supreme Court OF HONDURAS had deemed the plebiscite unconstitutional and prohibited the execution of such poll. The armed forces of Honduras arrested Zelaya, at his home, on the morning of June 28, 2009, the date of the scheduled vote, which the military chief had refused to coordinate. Per order of the country's Supreme Court Zelaya was held in an airbase outside Tegucigalpa before being flown to San José, Costa Rica. Roberto Micheletti, the former President of the Honduran Congress and a member of the same party as Zelaya, was sworn in as President by the National Congress on the afternoon of Sunday June 28 for a term that ends on January 1, 2010. Democratic elections are to be held in Honduras in November. So you all tell us what, in this process, has not been "officially established."

As an aside the government of the United States says it will not recognize the November elections and Zelaya should be allowed to resume his postition as dictator, excuse me, President. We can sleep well knowing that Hugo Chavez approves of the United States position on the matter as do all other dictators in South America.

OK, So the UN is at it Again

OK,

So the UN is chastising Israel again for violating the human rights of the Hamas. Forget Sudan. Forget North Korea. Forget Burma. Forget Iran. This is it, folks. Israel has become a singular axis of evil.

Human Rights Watch, World Report, January, 2009 (Washington, DC) – “The incoming Obama administration will need to put human rights at the heart of foreign, domestic, and security policy if it is to undo the enormous damage of the Bush years.” They went on, “Today, the most energetic diplomacy on human rights comes from such places as Algiers, Cairo, and Islamabad, with backing from Beijing and Moscow.”

Soooooo forget the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Burma, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe. The human rights watchers have told it like it is….good guys are China and Moscow and Egypt and Algeria…bad guys are the United States and Israel.

Even Presidential Advisor Brzezinski had a comment about Israeli jets attacking nuclear facilities in Iran: “Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not.”

Sooooo the United States will not only go back on its word to install a missile defense shield in eastern Europe we will install our jet fighters as a last line in the defense of Iran.

To quote someone who has a better handle on what is currently going on with our government let’s call on Alice in Wonderland: “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nonthing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

Yes, Alice. It appears we have all fallen down the rabbit hole.

Response to a Wall Street Journal Article on Conservatism Winning the Battle on Health Care

Gee and here I thought Conservatism was dead. Just goes to show ya...

Perhaps the reason that the Democrats are so disjointed is because they know that if they 'tell it like it is' to the citizens of this country regarding health care they would be in even more trouble than they are now? Perhaps they realize that having Obama on TV every day and saying the same 'nothing' is getting tiresome even for the most loyal of Democrats? Perhaps the idea that the President and Congress would be on a different health care plan than whatever Congress comes up with for the rest of us might be a reason that the general public are angry?

You left out the most important reason for the disgruntled citizens of this country, whether Republicans or Democrats, and it doesn't have anything to do with Limbaugh or Beck. The people in the White House don't realize that the people outside the beltway are not stupid and shouldn't be taken for granted. WE DON’T WANT TO BE PUSHED AROUND OR TOLD WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO LIVE! Obama said the he won the election so he can do what he wants. That is hogwash and we know it. That is not how this country works and the more the President stomps up and down like a spoiled child to try to get his way on health care the more opposition he will see. The country does not work that way. Checks and balances don’t work that way. And the Constitution was definitely not designed to work that way.

The folks up for re-election next year had better check their poll numbers and realize that this isn't Canada, or Britain, or Cuba, or Venezuela. This is the United States of America.


Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said:

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficial…The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Political Economy

Murphy’s Law of policy making: The costs of economic policy are always higher than promised and the benefits are always lower. Actually it wasn’t Murphy but Phaedrus, 2000 years ago, that made the observation.

How will a government run health care system benefit consumers of medical services? Let’s look at the track record of our government in the past when they attempted to modify the behavior of the citizens in this country.

Back in the 1970’s there was a gasoline shortage due to a so-called energy crisis. OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), the oil cartel, succeeded in raising the prices of petroleum products – including gasoline – to record-high levels. Consumers reacted by conserving their use of gasoline. What did the government do? Congress responded by enacting legislation mandating energy conservation as the law of the land. One of these laws was the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standard. It required each passenger car sold in the U.S. must meet a federally mandated fuel economy standard.

Conserving gas is a good thing, just like low priced health care is a good thing. But what are the costs associated with government involvement? With their CAFÉ standards auto manufacturers began to build smaller, lighter cars, cars that were more easily damaged in accidents and more costly to repair. They also began to design engines that were less responsive and more difficult to repair as well, making the operation of the newer vehicles more expensive for consumers to operate.

But the costs of the CAFÉ standards are measured not just in terms of the dollars and cents of reduced economic efficiency but also in terms of the people whose lives are lost when they are involved in accidents. For every 500-pound decrease in weight of a vehicle the percentage of fatalities in that vehicle goes up 14%. That translates to an increase of 3,000 deaths every year in automobile accidents and 15,000 serious non-fatal accidents per year.

And what did the consumers do? They began purchasing pickup trucks and SUV’s. By 2002 the market share for SUV’s and other light trucks had reached fully 50 percent of the 17 million passenger vehicles. And with the addition of the SUV’s that used a great deal more gas than the smaller fuel-efficient cars they also posed a greater risk to the smaller cars on the road.

But why was the law originally enacted? It would have been much more efficient to tax gasoline to drive usage of the product down and protect the environment. The structure of the law, though, suggested a different motive by our government. The CAFÉ standards looked at domestic and foreign cars differently, and directly insulated the U.S. auto industry from the rigors of foreign competition.

So what is going to happen to the health care system in this country when the President and Congress try again to control what is consumed by it’s citizens – this time timely medical treatment and choices for doctors and hospitals? I don’t believe it will get that far. There is one all-important goal to politicians in this country right now and it isn’t the altruistic ideal of health care for everyone, it is to get re-elected. They know that the people of this country from across the political spectrum have found their voices and will take their anger and exasperation to the polls next year.

And the next time a SUV or mini-van takes your parking place just remember: Their owners are just trying to prevent Congress from killing you to save jobs in Detroit.

AND IN THE HEADLINES THIS MONTH...

Mississippi police use taser and handcuffs on wayward emu

Naked man holds drunken intruder at gunpoint

Massachusetts postal worker admits to stealing 30,000 DVD’s

SC cheerleader hunts and kills 10 foot long alligator

Football game called when sinkhole opens

SC mayor orders no chase policy for police

Zombies march for charity

Woman in golf cart charged with DWI

NJ may ban chain link fences

Pissed off Virginia police aim to flush out urinal thieves

Obama will not sign a health care bill that adds one dime to the deficit

Government builds the Center for Comparative Effectiveness

Research to conduct, support and synthesize research to define our health care services

Government will build registries and data networks from medical records AND The Attorney General will have access to all medical records

There will be mandated Healthy People & National Public Health Performance Standards

U.S. to act on Climate

And

Government will increase funding to investigate waste, fraud, and abuse